NYU SLAM demands student representative on the Board of Trustees

This Friday September 23rd at 4:15pm, people walked past Schwartz Plaza outside of NYU’s Bobst Library to loud chants from a group of students known as NYU’s Student Labor Action Movement or SLAM for short. The rally preceded SLAM’s petition delivery to Terry Nolan at Bobst Library. The purpose of the petition was to demand student representation on NYU’s Board of Trustees. SLAM “demands transparency” on all actions of the Board.  

Itay Barylka

The Rally began with chants led such as “We demand transparency, Say NYU Trustees what are the students’ needs?” led by students like Kendra Prat and Hannah Fullerton. Student organizer Drew Weber shared that the Board “must be accountable to us, and that its priorities must be our priorities” on the relationship between students and the Board. Fellow students shared their thoughts on what a student on the Board would mean. There was consensus that this could be an opportunity for students to actually make a change in the school’s conditions for the better.

Drew Weber speaks

When SLAM entered the library they were met by members of Administration. A select few were allowed to go up to the 12th floor to give the petition, shown below, to Secretary of the Board Terry Nolan. Members of SLAM were initially surprised by the results of the meeting. According to Washington Square News Weber stated “one thing that was significant about today was that a couple of years ago, we would deliver a petition or a letter and maybe hand it to a security guard, and it would disappear into thin air.” What was obvious was that SLAM has gained much more traction since then. Last year’s successful Fight For 15 campaign by SLAM gave the movement a reputation among members of the administration as a group to not be messed with.

Hannah Fullerton, a Junior in Gallatin, who deals with the media for NYU SLAM stated, “We were expecting today to be met in the lobby [of Bobst] and then [that we would be] quickly told to leave after handing off our petition. We were met by the Head of Public Safety and then escorted up to the 12th floor meet with the Secretary of the Board. That was really big, to deliver the petition as our first action of the semester to an actual Board member when our campaign is about the board is incredible – it shows our power on campus. Right out the gate, we have really powerful interactions with the administration and I think it’s a really good sign of what’s to come”.

When asked about SLAM’s confidence in action by the Board, in light of the petition, Hannah said, “petitions never win you campaigns [but] a petition is a really big step. We are only two weeks into school and we already have 500 signatures – clearly the student body is behind us. But we’re not expecting it to change anything right now. It’s about educating the student body about the Board of Trustees and it’s going to include conversations with the Board – all of that is going to be important to the campaign”.

SLAM issued a press release later on Friday, describing the drive behind the petition and the protest action itself.

What happens after this petition drop has not been finalized. Whether or not SLAM will be successful is not definite yet. But based off of Friday’s results and SLAM’s past campaigns, a student representative could be very possible in NYU’s future. As of now SLAM has gained support from Bard College Students Without Borders and NYU’s graduate student union, GSOC. The support increases as the campaign continues.